Cristina Odone is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster specialising in the relationship between society, families and faith. She is the director of communications for the Legatum institute and is a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman. She is married and lives in west London with her husband, two stepsons and a daughter. Her new ebook No God Zone is now available on Kindle.

Daily statins for all takes some swallowing

Faith in medical miracles is in my DNA. It was my father who came up with “Lorenzo’s Oil”, a combination of erucic and oleic acids, to stop the adrenoleukodystrophy that was killing his seven-year-old son. After their initial scepticism, doctors hailed it as an effective preventive measure.

But I am also a medical sceptic. I distrust the way that a study published on Monday can find that rhubarb is a cause of cancer, and another on Tuesday that it is the cure for it. I worry about the motives of the big pharmaceutical companies, and the sloppy statistics behind much commercial research, in which studies showing that a drug works get trumpeted, and others showing that it doesn’t get buried.

I’m also alarmed by the mass medicalisation of daily life. Women whose husbands lack the bedroom touch are told they need female Viagra; children who are restless or naughty must be doped with Ritalin; and anyone who feels mildly blue is topped up with Prozac.

Worryingly, the idea of a daily dose of a drug – even for the healthy – is gaining ground. Recently, taking a small daily dose of aspirin was suggested as a precautionary measure against common forms of cancer for anyone over 45. Now, the proposal is for Britain to become a “statin nation”.

We shouldn’t dismiss the problem: heart disease is the number one killer in Britain, America and the rest of Europe. High cholesterol, one of the crucial markers for it, is found in more than two thirds of Britons. Statins have been proved to lower cholesterol significantly, within a few months. While there may be no such thing as a “magic bullet”, statins are, as GP Patrick Ruane puts it, “fantastically effective”. Indeed, they already have made an impact. Britons are having fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, and suffering less from kidney disease.

Now, a report suggests doctors prescribe the drugs to everyone over 55 – the age when most heart attacks and strokes hit. In terms of health economics, it is difficult to fault their logic. Heart attacks and strokes require costly hospital stays; for some patients who have been completely incapacitated, the intensive after-care can last a decade or more. For a cash-strapped health service, facing what one doctor described to me as “a tsunami of elderly patients”, universal use of statins would avert budgetary doom at a bargain price – a daily dose can costs as little as 20p.

But if the profit-and-loss account makes sense, what about the ethics? When doctors call for mass medicalisation, they risk trampling on individual choice. The defence often used is that of herd immunity. Remember the row over the MMR vaccine, when many parents were refusing to accept the jab, even though it was perfectly safe? For the diseases to be contained, at least 90 per cent of children had to be inoculated. Parental choice, in this context, had endangered everyone’s child.

However, this argument does not apply with heart disease, since it is not infectious – although bad habits may be. What does matter, though, is that every drug has side-effects, and, like so much else, they involve a conscious decision to take a risk.

My husband, who suffered from mildly raised cholesterol, was prescribed statins that instantly blurred his memory (unfortunately, he retained some damning details, such as the price of my winter coat). Other patients on statins have complained about muscular pain and even liver malfunction.

My husband has to be free to choose between being embarrassed at a dinner party because he cannot remember the hostess’s name, or taking other measures to ward off the kind of cholesterol that carries a high risk of heart attacks and strokes, such as walking to work or keeping off the butter and cheese. Which way should he go? Only he can say: doctors can advise, but should not answer that question for him.

Mass prescription of statins also carries another risk. It will create a social convention where those who decline the drugs are seen as selfish – neglectful of their families’ welfare and eager to gobble up the NHS’s resources. The pressure to conform may even take on unpleasant new twists, such as a hospital refusing to treat a heart attack victim who has not taken his daily statins.

In a doped-up nation, no one is really a free agent. Those who rely on statins may not turn into zombies, or adopt that placid, bovine look that is the telltale sign of too many years on Prozac, but they risk losing their autonomy nevertheless. “I couldn’t do this on my own” is a dangerous lesson to learn, and one that can seep into every aspect of your life. Cutting the cost of health care is a great common goal – but if those who refuse to sign up to statins are branded subversives, the price will have been too high.